LITMIR.BIZ

       Waiting for Sciences Po

      I passed every single one of my exams, with a warrior-like determination. I was quite the little trouper when it came down to it. The Bac was a cinch, but Sciences Po was another matter altogether. I stressed out crazily about not knowing a thing, about getting the one subject that I hadn’t swotted up on. I’d prepared as best I could, but it just wasn’t possible to revise the whole curriculum. I felt confident, as if I were in control of the situation, and yet at the same time I felt fragile and at the mercy of random chance, which could completely upset all my plans. The exam took place in a room without air conditioning where the temperature hit 40°C – it was an ordeal as much as an exam. And I wouldn’t know if I’d passed it, or the other entrance exams I’d taken, until the end of July.

      In the meantime, I decided to call Seb, just to see. When I asked him, ‘Do you remember me?’ he replied, ‘I was hardly likely to forget you!’ I know it was daft of me, but I liked hearing him say that. And after all, it was an option: if I wasn’t smart enough to succeed with my brain – in journalism, theatre, politics or something like that – then perhaps I could use my ‘dream body’ to get on in life?

      We set up a meeting and Mum dropped me off at his door near Saint-Michel. She must have said at least a dozen times: ‘If there’s the slightest problem, you leave, promise? And you call me. You call me and I’ll come and get you.’ Don’t worry, Mum. I just wanted to talk about what the job entailed, find out how things worked and see what he had to offer me. Then if I didn’t get into Sciences Po or one of the other colleges, there was still a chance of finding myself in New York for fashion week. I’d been dreaming of New York ever since Friends and Sex and the City and perhaps I’d take to fashion week really well.

      This guy really talked nineteen to the dozen. He didn’t stop talking from the moment I entered the room, going on about my nose, my blue eyes, my endless legs – ‘How tall are you? Looking at you, I’d say 5 foot 10, right? Bang on, I knew it! You’re just perfect, my angel. Perfect!’ – as well as the agencies, the fashion shows, the castings, the photo shoots, the sublime clothes of the top designers, the ad campaigns worth hundreds of thousands of euros, the fantastic hotels all around the globe and all the top-flight models he’d personally discovered and coached to the summit of their profession. I politely listened to him taking me for an idiot. If he was so successful, what was he doing in this shabby little studio, which didn’t even belong to him but to his girlfriend Clémentine, a pretty, slightly plump girl who wanted to become an actress and who he was ‘coaching’ too?

      Being an actress was my own dream. I’d known it since I saw Romy Schneider in Sissi when I was 8. I’d taken the Sciences Po entrance exam because I was a conscientious pupil and my father had advised me to get some qualifications first, but my goal had always been to become an actress. ‘You’re mad, Victoire, don’t even consider it!’ Seb declared. ‘You’ve got the physique of a model, not an actress. When I saw Marion Cotillard in Taxi, I knew straight away, before anyone else, that she would become a film star. She’s got that something extra. You don’t. You’re a supermodel. You don’t have a Hollywood face.’

      He was increasingly getting on my nerves – all this talk about himself and the constant name-dropping. It smacked of lies, his whole spiel about being the African diplomat’s son who’d wanted to study at Sciences Po (what a coincidence!) but had ultimately decided to ‘coach his girls’ instead. A pathetic mixture of fake bling, dreams and drudgery. But we were talking about Elite, after all, and he was saying he could get me in with them!

      We did some photos, or rather ‘Polaroids’, as they’re called – it used to be the only way they had of creating instant snaps. Nowadays, they’re digital photos of course, but without any retouching or make-up or anything else, and he was going to use them to present me to Elite. In the Vogue magazines scattered on the coffee table, he showed me the basics of a pose: hair tied back to show off the face, head slightly inclined and looking straight ahead. ‘Show intent in your gaze. We need to get the impression that you’re thinking. And half open your lips, so that you don’t look withdrawn.’ One side of me wanted to take the piss out of him, while the other was concentrating like mad on trying to follow all his instructions at once. Seb was right: posing is a professional art. But did I really want it to be my profession?

      When the time came to leave, I told him I would think about it.

      My parents and I had a long discussion at home that evening. Dad was really into the idea: ‘Do you realise what an opportunity this is, Victoire? You’re going to be travelling around the world to the most beautiful places and earning loads of money for doing not very much. You won’t get another opportunity like this. You’re young, so you can afford to give it a go for a year.’

      He was right: what if it was the chance of a lifetime?

      But Mum was more hesitant: if I got into Sciences Po or one of the other colleges, was it really a good idea to turn them down? Of course what Seb was offering me was an amazing experience, but wouldn’t I get tired of it very quickly, as I did with everything else? Wouldn’t I regret it? Or, worse still, would I hold it against her and Dad for allowing me to make such a bad choice?

      I went to bed with Seb’s words whirling around in my head – all the magazine images he’d foisted on me, all the professional jargon he’d spouted and all the illustrious names he’d dropped into the conversation: New York, Tokyo, London; Polaroids, photo shoots, ‘books’, castings; Dior, Galliano, Céline, Castelbajac; Claudia, Natalia, Kate … If I didn’t give it a go, would I spend the rest of my life regretting it?

      The following morning, I called him: yes, I did want to meet Elite. Just to see.